well considering Palm has patented the smartphone in general I think they're at a good stalemate. Palm is pretty much focusing most of what's left of their money on r&d for new products. the fact that they have all this patent clout just assures that they can do so in peace without having to divert funds to litigation.

I may agree with the point but to the average user they won't get that. Apple's marketing department is going to do exactly what they did with copy and paste. Basically, act like they invented it and everyone is going to be in awe of multitasking. You really do have to commend their marketing department and deep pockets. It throws up some pretty impressive smoke screens that ultimately just sells more products.

Their marketing department is simply picking up fruit and riches left hanging around by competitors that they don't bother to advertise. Palm is just the latest and most egregious example of this.

Actually, these are good use cases. Unfortunately, you do have to swipe over or minimize to actually see the next cards, so it's not quite as seamless as just taking a look and popping back in. But the WAY BETTER notifications of WebOS alleviate the need for this too. Until Apple gets the notifications much better, WebOS is still much more useful when it comes to multitasking, I think.

I added a screenshot that shows more of what I'm talking about. Oh heck, here it is again. I think this is a much-ignored featured of webOS, that I just love. It's simple, but effective. Notice here how I can see my itinerary, my email status, and the outside temp, all in one view.

not apples fault apple has a great marketing department. palm can do the same... they just did so with the borg lady and other stuff. their fault for not capitalizing on their strengths and showing it.

Originally Posted by bpdamas

I may agree with the point but to the average user they won't get that. Apple's marketing department is going to do exactly what they did with copy and paste. Basically, act like they invented it and everyone is going to be in awe of multitasking. You really do have to commend their marketing department and deep pockets. It throws up some pretty impressive smoke screens that ultimately just sells more products.

Palm still has a better implementation of multi-tasking...
Palm still has a more open & customizable OS...
Palm still has synergy...
Palm still has better notifications...

The iPhone's true advantage still remains - a huge core of developers. The fact that it now has a pretty terrible implementation of multi-tasking doesn't change that. iPhone 4.0 is still not as good, slick, or as attractive as WebOS 1.4 for the every-day user IMHO, it just has a vastly superior marketing machine and of course developers behind it.

Palm just need to focus on getting us a new piece of hardware and opening up APIs in the OS, like they always had to do.

Also, iAds is showing that their app ecosystem is way, way, way more interoperable than WebOS is. The way that developers can access so many other apps and APIs from within their own maps...it's impressive.

Their marketing department is simply picking up fruit and riches left hanging around by competitors that they don't bother to advertise. Palm is just the latest and most egregious example of this.

Originally Posted by donm527

not apples fault apple has a great marketing department. palm can do the same... they just did so with the borg lady and other stuff. their fault for not capitalizing on their strengths and showing it.

Completely agree with both of those comments. It's only the other companies faults and not Apple's for being better marketing their product. We are in complete agreement.

Let's be honest here: Palm better come up with something soon or the only reason a lot of people will stay with Palm is because they don't want to be on AT&T. I'm staying on Sprint because I have a great deal and the service is good, but when the EVO 4G comes out I may not stick around. If an iPhone goes to verizon and is compatible with Sprint, I may get one to jailbreak it. Basically...what the hell is Palm going to do to compete?

The only thing that Palm has done is provide the PDK support to port iPhone apps over to the Pre, and that's only been for games. Where are all the cool apps? Where's a decent media player with good performance? Where's a silky smooth interface that doesn't chug on the simplest thing? Why is it that I need to do a 20% overclock on my phone to get UI performance that doesn't make me want to chuck my phone out a window?

Speaking of the phone, why the hell is the phone app so slow? Look, palm has some great things going for it: the contact merging is incredible and I wouldn't want to live without it. The facebook integration throughout is great. Email works really well. Notifications rock. Wifi tethering. The open nature of the platform is great. But that doesn't fix the problem that the only apps that are being released for this platform on a regular basis are quote compilations and hot girl background apps. There is NOTHING useful coming out for WebOS because a) market penetration sucks and b) it's a separate dev cycle from the iPhone. And Palm isn't doing enough to fix this. The only applications that I've seen that are in any way decent (and not necessarily any better than their iPhone equivalents) are foursquare, tweed, NYTimes, LA Times, facebook, and engadget. Only foursquare and engadget are not launch apps. In the 10 months since the phone came out, in my usage, only two more worthwhile apps have come out.

Look, Palm needs to better foster the app ecosystem. If that means copy iPhone's SDK and throw money at the problem then so be it. Palm also needs to come out with new hardware. Significant hardware refreshes need to come no less than 18 months apart, and they better be hot. This iPhone announcement just made me sour on Palm's future...

11:02AM "We are releasing it for end users for iPhone and iPod touch for users this summer. For the 3GS and iPod touch 3rd gen. And, for iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2nd gen, they will run many things... but there are some things they won't run, like multitasking."